A Magic Flute

Paris: On Saturday, September 20, at the Trianon club in Montmartre, the
young French flutist and bandleader Magic Malik took jazz into uncharted
territory when he presided over a happening that combined the music with chess.

Although not exactly a chess grand master, he did win a mid-level cup
recently and he loves the game. He finds openings, gambits and end games in chess and
jazz alike, and they both involve theme and variations -- he works a lot with
that.

Most jazz flutists have been saxophonists doubling. Eric Dolphy, Joe
Farrell, Lew Tabackin and James Moody were basically doublers. Malik, on the
other hand, feels that, "the flute is an instrument all by itself. If you play
sax, too. it's like speaking Spanish and Italian at the same time. I started
with the flute, I'll finish with the flute."

From time to time, he also sings. Trying to "make the flute a two-voiced
instrument," he's learning how to play two-part Bach, singing one of the parts
multiphonically. Improvising, he sometimes hums and shouts along with himself, in
homage to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, one of his heroes. "Kirk combined the
intellectual with the physical in a unique way," he said. "No other flutist ever
touched me so deeply." Malik also lists J.S. Bach, George Benson, James Galway and
John Scofield among his musical mentors.

Jazz and chess day on the 20 started about one p.m. with a chess tournament
accompanied and punctuated by soft acoustic music, not necessarily jazz. He'd
invited friends to play both. (There were also mime and photography
presentations.) The evening concert included two DJs, elaborate electronic effects and
guest soloists. Malik, who expected it all to end around two in the morning,
explained: "As long as I'm living in a big city like Paris, I'd like to try and
do something a bit bigger."

Born Malik Mezzadri in the Ivory Coast from an Ivorian father and a French
mother, he grew up in Guadeloupe with his mother and a stepfather, a theater
director. The theater played an important role in his childhood. His biological
father had come from a nomad tribe and Malik considers himself "a nomad by
inheritance." He combines the lights of the big city with a life on water by
living on a boat ("Neptune"), anchored near the Bastille. With his pilot's license,
he can take regular trips up and down the Seine and the Marne.

After graduating from the Marseille Conservatory of Music, he worked with
such French pop-oriented jazz groups as St. Germain and Julien Lourau's Groove
Gang in Germany, China, Africa and Latin America as well as France. He has never
performed in the U.S. For four years, he's been leading the Magic Malik
Orchestra -- in fact, a quintet. It has become one of those rare events in jazz, a
working band. "We're lucky," Malik said. "We get enough work to be able to
continue to stay together without having to compromise."

It's more than luck. The originality of his delicate balance between
territories is impressive. He is proposing another texture. Given its
folkish melodies, rock and reggae feel, abstract flurries, whole-tone
sequences, computer programs and his sophisticated funky flute lines,
traditionalists do not quite know what to make of Malik's music. Malik once called
himself a "self-taught dilettante." He has said that he likes to blow into
bottles: "It can sound like a DJ scratching." He can talk about Django, Ravel and
Stockhausen. On his recent double-CD 00-237 (Label Blue), the fertile
mix is enriched by several guest appearances by Steve Coleman. (A single CD
would probably have been enough.)

Malik prefers the departure point to be determined in advance by
"old-fashioned notes written on paper," but after that there are
variations. "I don't like it when jazz gets too theoretical," he said.
"'Musique Contemporain' can take care of that department. I hope my music is
intellectually satisfying, but it's also supposed to make the body move.

"What I like about jazz is that it's as valid as any other music worth
devoting your life to -- but at the same time it's popular music. That
doesn't mean stupid music. You have to judge pop music from its own point of
view and to learn from it -- to learn tolerance at the very least.

"Pop musicians like Prince, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye have a special
combination of quality and humanity. Sting writes beautiful songs -- I've been
trying to reharmonize them. I love what jazzmen do with popular songs. Like Miles
Davis with [Cindy Lauper's] 'Time After Time.' They transform something made
for the masses into a personal statement. They can make the most subtle,
complicated music out of the most simple material. I'm going to do something like
that on my next album. It's provocative."

Mike Zwerin published this piece originally in the International Herald
Tribune. Ed. Howard Mandel, a flute freak, wants to comment that regardless of
their sax doubling, players such as Wess, Moody, Mann, Tabackin, Dolphy, Kirk and
Lateef all contributed significantly and specifically to flute language.